Going Somewhere: A Bicycle Journey Across America by Brian Benson Page B
Authors: Brian Benson
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an armpit-deep pool between two falls. The river was too cold to stay in for long, so we climbed out and lay on the rocks. The water soothed my sunbaked skin, and the rapids trickled and crashed, drowning out the hum of highway traffic. For a few minutes, I slept.
• • •
N orth of Gooseberry Falls, the Gitchi-Gami started behaving like that well-intentioned host who shows you every homemade quilt, every inherited-from-Grandpa bookcase, every photo of Jeffrey when he was a baby, when all you’re looking for is the fridge. As the trail headed north, it plunged into valleys, climbed heaps of granite, chased birch groves and lake vistas, so that every highway mile seemed to require two trail miles. This might have been fun on an afternoon joyride. But we were hauling freight, had been all day, and no longer needed a roller coaster. We needed to get to Illgen Falls, fast. It was pushing six, and the sky was clouding up, and my butt hurt, and this meant that Rachel’s butt probably hurt too, and her butt hurt might cause her to get cranky again, and then I’d probably end up saying something stupid, and then she’d call this whole thing off and leave me out here, alone.
So we barely even stopped at Split Rock Lighthouse, just gave it the obligatory, two-minute ponderous gaze; chugged right through Beaver Bay, which was less the quaint town I’d been expecting and more a collection of gas stations; and suffered through the final miles on 61, which was getting downright ominous. The pavement dipped and dove, wind tumbled off the water, and cauliflower clouds rolled in overhead. My legs were burning, my neck and back stiffening up, but I ignored all the aches, focused only on the rearview, on Rachel, who was struggling too. I did my best to find a speed that neither patronized nor exhausted her.
It was dusk when we pulled up to the barely marked trail that led to Illgen Falls. The path was narrow and brambly, and we walked it gingerly, steering the bikes around roots and ducking under branches, until we emerged at the basin Mike had described. Before us, river water shot from a sheer face, falling forty feet into an inky lagoon. I dropped the bike, walked to the edge, and focused on the spot where falling water hit waiting water. It was all blue and black and mist and foam. I tore off my clothes, and before I could cool down, before I could get squeamish and second-guess, I took three steps back, two bounds forward, and flung myself over the edge.
Forty feet is a long way to fall, long enough to ask yourself why the hell you just decided to step off firm ground and launch yourself into the void. Then your feet slap the water, and you plunge through the black, and everything becomes a seething, swirling mess, and for a nanosecond you believe you’ll never stop falling, never be able to claw your way back to the surface. But then you do.
Hours later, after our first cooked-on-the-beer-can dinner, after some making-up-for-the-fight-we-almost-had sex, after Rachel fell asleep, I crawled out of the tent. Listening to the roar of the water, pulling sweet mist through my nostrils, I thought about the day, our first without the safety nets. I had to admit it hadn’t really been that enjoyable in the moment. It was only now that I could smile about the ugly highway and the meandering trail and my own idiocy, only now that I could construct the stories I’d eventually tell others. The stories I’d tell myself.
I wondered if this was what awaited us. Thousands of miles that would only make sense in retrospect.
• • •
B reakfast was cowboy coffee, bananas, and pancakes topped with the Simeones’ syrup. On the lip of the falls, Rachel and I ate while looking over a glossy threefold pamphlet she’d been handed at the visitor center in Two Harbors. The cover showed a pretty, hilly forest bisected by an arcing strip of pavement: the Superior National Forest Scenic Byway. Didn’t exactly roll off the tongue,
• • •
N orth of Gooseberry Falls, the Gitchi-Gami started behaving like that well-intentioned host who shows you every homemade quilt, every inherited-from-Grandpa bookcase, every photo of Jeffrey when he was a baby, when all you’re looking for is the fridge. As the trail headed north, it plunged into valleys, climbed heaps of granite, chased birch groves and lake vistas, so that every highway mile seemed to require two trail miles. This might have been fun on an afternoon joyride. But we were hauling freight, had been all day, and no longer needed a roller coaster. We needed to get to Illgen Falls, fast. It was pushing six, and the sky was clouding up, and my butt hurt, and this meant that Rachel’s butt probably hurt too, and her butt hurt might cause her to get cranky again, and then I’d probably end up saying something stupid, and then she’d call this whole thing off and leave me out here, alone.
So we barely even stopped at Split Rock Lighthouse, just gave it the obligatory, two-minute ponderous gaze; chugged right through Beaver Bay, which was less the quaint town I’d been expecting and more a collection of gas stations; and suffered through the final miles on 61, which was getting downright ominous. The pavement dipped and dove, wind tumbled off the water, and cauliflower clouds rolled in overhead. My legs were burning, my neck and back stiffening up, but I ignored all the aches, focused only on the rearview, on Rachel, who was struggling too. I did my best to find a speed that neither patronized nor exhausted her.
It was dusk when we pulled up to the barely marked trail that led to Illgen Falls. The path was narrow and brambly, and we walked it gingerly, steering the bikes around roots and ducking under branches, until we emerged at the basin Mike had described. Before us, river water shot from a sheer face, falling forty feet into an inky lagoon. I dropped the bike, walked to the edge, and focused on the spot where falling water hit waiting water. It was all blue and black and mist and foam. I tore off my clothes, and before I could cool down, before I could get squeamish and second-guess, I took three steps back, two bounds forward, and flung myself over the edge.
Forty feet is a long way to fall, long enough to ask yourself why the hell you just decided to step off firm ground and launch yourself into the void. Then your feet slap the water, and you plunge through the black, and everything becomes a seething, swirling mess, and for a nanosecond you believe you’ll never stop falling, never be able to claw your way back to the surface. But then you do.
Hours later, after our first cooked-on-the-beer-can dinner, after some making-up-for-the-fight-we-almost-had sex, after Rachel fell asleep, I crawled out of the tent. Listening to the roar of the water, pulling sweet mist through my nostrils, I thought about the day, our first without the safety nets. I had to admit it hadn’t really been that enjoyable in the moment. It was only now that I could smile about the ugly highway and the meandering trail and my own idiocy, only now that I could construct the stories I’d eventually tell others. The stories I’d tell myself.
I wondered if this was what awaited us. Thousands of miles that would only make sense in retrospect.
• • •
B reakfast was cowboy coffee, bananas, and pancakes topped with the Simeones’ syrup. On the lip of the falls, Rachel and I ate while looking over a glossy threefold pamphlet she’d been handed at the visitor center in Two Harbors. The cover showed a pretty, hilly forest bisected by an arcing strip of pavement: the Superior National Forest Scenic Byway. Didn’t exactly roll off the tongue,
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